How AIM taught the internet to chat
If you were an internet user around the turn of the century, there's a good chance I could play a one-second long sound of a door opening and memories would immediately come flooding back. Memories of running home from school and logging onto AOL Instant Messenger to chat with your friends or your crush. Maybe […]
2025: a year in art on The Verge
The Verge art team's favorite projects this year spanned the circus surrounding DOGE, the myths of the Vietnam War, the privacy crisis for trans people online, the vast surveillance network aimed at tracking down Iranian military dissidents, and much more. We built a kaleidoscope to showcase some standout products from The Verge's gift guides, sent […]
Humanoid robots are coming. Eventually?
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on robotics and AI, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. We're taking a winter break! The Stepback will be back on January 11th, 2026. […]
Our favorite stuff of 2025
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 110, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy holidays, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been reading about mall Santas and malleable software and phone bans, wondering how I […]
Sony’s XM5 headphones and the latest Kindle round out this week’s best deals
If you’re feeling the stress of having procrastinated on your holiday shopping — and you missed out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday — we’ve got you. We’ve found a variety of gadgets on sale that make for great gifts, many of which will ship in time for the holidays. One of the standouts is […]
The best last-minute Christmas gifts you can grab for under $50
Holiday shoppers, it's time to finish knocking out that seasonal wish list. At this point, your online purchases may not arrive in time unless you're willing to pay extra for priority shipping - or you happen to get lucky. Still, gifting anything at all is awfully nice of you, regardless of when it arrives. If […]
The LCD Steam Deck is done
The most affordable Steam Deck, the $399 LCD model, is not available in the US. And, according to the Steam Deck site, it won't be coming back. Underneath the listings for the various models is a note that says: We are no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will […]
Dogpile’s puzzles mix Balatro, Tetris, and a pile of puppies
One day, video game critics and journalists will put together a comprehensive study on the impact Balatro had on the industry - of how so many games that came after tried to capture its essence by adding complex systems to otherwise simple, easily understood games. Until then, I'm gonna play Dogpile. Dogpile is a deckbuilding […]
You can buy your Xbox Ally an official pair of anti-drift joysticks
Even at $1,000, the Xbox Ally X handheld didn't ship with magnetic drift-resistant joysticks, and neither did the $600 model. But for an extra $20 at Amazon, you can change that today - with officially Asus-approved and sanctioned TMR joysticks from Gulikit, the company that's made a name for itself by supplying aftermarket drift-resistant sticks. […]
‘Friend slop’ made co-op gaming goofier than ever in 2025
When a friend invited me to play a new game called REPO earlier this year, I thought I was wasting my money - not because the game looked bad, but because it looked like Lethal Company. The surprise-hit 2024 co-op survival horror game has players wander through unnerving ruined structures collecting trash while evading monsters. […]